High Court cases: ScotusBlog. This pick is the answer to a question posed by Kevin in Cypress, Texas. “Since the Aereo case is being heard by the Supreme Court this week, I decided to search the app store for an app so I could listen to the audio feed of the hearing. I can’t seem to find one. Do you know if such a thing does exist? It would be a great choice for your pick of the day.” (4/22)

Sadly, there are no live streams of Supreme Court oral arguments. However, audio recordings are released free on the Court’s Web site, www.supremecourt.gov, at the end of each argument week. But don’t despair! Jennie’s pick of the day is ScotusBlog, which is one of the best websites around for reporting and analysis of the highest court in the land. It is available as an iOS app, and they’re working on an Android version. ScotusBlog live blogs opinions as they are handed down, which is helpful when you’re having a hard time wading through the complex legal language that determines whether one guy is elected president or the other guy.

Coffee:Capresso 560.01 Infinity Burr Grinder. If you like to make coffee at home, but you’re still using good old reliable Mr. Coffee with good old reliable pre-ground coffee, perhaps its time for an upgrade? Today’s pick of the day: A Capresso 560.01 Infinity Burr Grinder. Grinding your own beans ups your coffee quality by at least 50%. Using a conical burr grinder instead of the traditional two-blade grinder produces a uniform grind by only allowing grains of a specific size to pass through the machine, among other benefits. Amazon has them for about eighty bucks, which is NOT cheap, but it’s worth the investment. Now you can all fight among yourselves about which method of coffee preparation is the best. Jennie chose a Chemex brewer, but that’s another story for another pick of the day

Online writing:MediumOh boy oh boy, Jennie loves Medium. It’s a gorgeous online writing site that lifts online writing out of the ‘Blogger’ era. (It helps that Medium was created by Ev Williams and team, who…well… you know.) The site has rich photo options, and a beautifully designed, simple to use interface. It’s a site that makes you want to write. Medium is still a work in progress–it’s not always clear should happens with a post after its published, other than tweeting it out and hoping it gets picked up, but its been fascinating to watch the Medium universe expand. Free.

Coffee: IntelligentsiaYeah, so the name’s a little much, and it ain’t cheap, but the fresh-roasted coffee is just that good. Intelligentsia has coffee bars in three cities: Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. If you live elsewhere, they have a great online shop for both coffee and tools of the trade and a tremendous app that helps you make a perfect cup of coffee–whichever method you prefer. (They sell some pretty delicious tea, too.)

Image archives:Art Resource & The Kobal CollectionJennie has worked with the folks at Art Resource & The Picture Desk for years. The Kobal Collection is an amazing library of movie stills and posters. The best part: Real people work here.

Note-taking: EvernoteJennie uses an endless succession of little paper notebooks for writing grocery lists, to-do lists, etc. But Evernote falls into a different category– it’s Jennie’s 2nd brain, a comprehensive digital idea locker available across all devices. Clip an article or recipe from the web, take a picture of the fancy whizamajigger you certainly shouldn’t buy now, but may want later. You can encrypt notes, set reminders, and manage a team with shared notebooks. They even sell a Moleskine journal that wants to bridge the gap between the little notebook method of remembering and the app that never forgets. Someday, Jennie’s gonna to buy that journal–and she won’t forget, b/c she wrote it down on her Evernote wish list. Free and premium versions available.

Weather: Yahoo Weather AppA simple weather app that uses stunning Flickr images as a backdrop for detailed weather data. The first app of the Marissa era is available on Apple and Android devices, and it’s one of only a few Yahoo apps this ex-yodeler won’t ‘mutually separate’ from. Free.

Budgeting: Mint.com This budgeting service is simple and easy to set up/use. It reminds you about upcoming bills and warns you when you’ve gone over budget. While it’s not meant to be full-fledged accounting software like Quicken, Mint is an excellent day-to-day reality check on just how much you’re spending. Free.

My pick is the book Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold.

If you’re at all interested in technology (and you certainly are, since you’re listening to a tech news podcast!), this book is a serious eye-opener. We use these things–computers, tablets, smartphones–every day, but the vast majority of us don’t know how they work. How DO they work? How can an array of transistors play a movie on my screen?

In this book, the author takes you through the process of building a theoretical computer, starting with nothing but a flashlight. It’s very easy to understand, and is highly relevant, despite the fact that it was published 15 years ago(!).

It’s the #1 seller in Theory of Computing on Amazon, but don’t let the categorization scare you. It’s very approachable and requires no prior computing knowledge.

For anyone in the Apple ecosystem with tight data plans, I just got My Data Manager from Mobidia Technology. This is a solid app to track your data usage for your iphone/ipad/iPod Touch in real time. It tracks both your wifi and cellular data, and you are able to set your billing cycle and data cap as well. You can see a graph of your usage to see where you use the most data and get notifications when you’re getting close to your limit. Best of all it’s 100% free!

From technosquid: My pick is sarahlane.com, thurrott.com, and the twitter handles of the same names. On Wednesday, both of these technology reporter favorites made (unrelated) announcements regarding big changes in their professional lives.

Awhile back Kevin was listening to Darren Kitchen and I talk about the possibility of Facebook getting a dislike button and we mentioned it would be nice if you could select different emotions. Kevin writes: “The discussion reminded me of a site that aggregates and summarizes the hottest news, called Newser (www.newser.com). I have used this site for years, and really like how it presents news. If you look at a story, you have the option to click a reaction to the story. They offer Hilarious, Depressing, Scary, Intriguing, Brilliant, and Ridiculous as options (see the attached image). They then allow users to search news based on what type of story they want based on the reactions.

This year I found this youtube channel called computerphile. I first saw it appear when the channel posted a video on how the heart bleed vulnerability works (they did not want people to use the bug, but showed how it worked and why)

Warning some videos are very technical!

The youtube channel has loads of videos about all kinds of computer related questions including networking, computer history and many others. If you have some time browse through the list of videos.

I have a pick for someone who is looking to get rid of cable. I recently picked up a Tablo,

It is a DVR for over-the-air broadcasts. Setup is simple. You connect an antenna, a USB hard drive for storage and connect up the power brick. You can plug it into Ethernet or just put it on your Wifi network. The unit can hide wherever it is convenient because after it is setup, you just stream live and recorded TV to your devices. We are a mostly Apple household so we stream to iPads and iPhones and Airplay to AppleTVs or stream to a web browser on one of our computers. The website says they support Android tablets and phones, Kindle Fire tablets, Roku and Plex. I haven’t tried any of those though. It is simple to browse the guide and setup recording schedules. You can even set it up to be reachable remotely so you can watch your TV wherever you have Internet access.

Be aware that you do need to buy a guide subscription but they have several different options for that too, including a single lifetime subscription fee.

Tablo is one part of my cord-cutting solution which also includes Netflix and the odd iTunes TV show purchase. I heartily recommend it.
—
Jeremy Rand

My recommendation for pick of the day is Circa News. Its available for Android and iOS (I use Android), and its my favorite way to get my daily news. It’s the closest digital equivalent I’ve come across to the experience of picking up a newspaper in the morning, you can set a time when it delivers a customized “Daily Briefing” with all the major news stories in the last 24-hours. The articles are written AP-style, efficient but not to the point of losing valuable detail. All sources used are cited at the bottom of each article, and you can follow a story to get notifications of any updates. My only gripe would be for some editorial content, but I can always use an RSS reader to fill in the gap.

Hey DTNS folks. Tom made a comment about folks who didn’t have access to the Google Play store sometimes using Amazon as an alternate marketplace, so I wanted to share my favorite source for Android software, https://f-droid.org/. F-droid is a repository of free and open source software. You initially side load the app, but then it functions just like any app store, except it’s free, (both gratis and libre).

When you were discussing the need for batch renaming tools you mentioned that you would sometimes need this for renaming digital camera files with a date or location instead of just having them named something like IMG_0001.JPG.

I use “geosetter” to read the EXIF header and automatically rename the files with the date the pictures were taken. There are options to choose the date format or embed some descriptive words in the filename.

Hi Marlon “TheGuyFromTrinidad” here, my pick of the day is Android Wear. Why you ask? Because it just got a major update to 5.0 , which has added features like the ability to bring a card back you dismissed, its easier to block app notifications directly from the watch, easy access to a sunlight mode (boost brightness) and a theatre mode (turn off the display and mute vibrations) and the long awaited watchface api. One of the best implementations of the api I have seen is former pick of the day, the live wallpaper app Muzei that mirrors the wallpaper on your phone straight to your watch.
The update also brings the feature that when you do image searches the images will appear right on your watch so you don’t have to pull out your phone. https://plus.google.com/+MarlonThompson/posts/ibBq2YpV5sq

So if your in the Android ecosystem and your not waiting on that other smartwatch to come out maybe check out an Android wear watch as many of them are on sale right now and you have six to choose from.

I have been on a few road trips recently, and I wanted to pass along a site that I have found to be fairly helpful in my travels. The site is fuelmyroute.com (with an app available on Google Play). If you give FuelMyRoute your starting location and destination, the site will identify the cheapest gas prices along your route. You can edit the fuel grade, how far off your route it should search for gas stations, and how often it should report gas prices (every 50, 100, 150, etc. miles). It reports the prices on a Google map, with stations color coded to based on if their prices are below or above the average price. You can zoom in on the map to show prices at other stations along your route.f

The service does not allow for routes with multiple destinations, and it will only report prices along the default driving route from Google Maps. Even with these limitations, I have found the site to be very helpful in planning out my road trips. I thought I would pass this along to the rest of the DTNS community.

Hey Tom & Jennie,
I feel like I’m overloading your inboxes but I’m sure I’ll go dormant for a few months and leave you guys alone after this

Anyway, I am doing a gift exchange with my California inlaws and we are using the Elfster.com web site to coordinate that. People sign up, set up a wish list and the random drawing assigns folks to each other. The admin can make it so certain people don’t get each other (like married members of the family don’t get each other for example) so it’s pretty convenient. We’ve been using it for a few years and it’s working fine though the web site leaves a bit to be desired but it gets the job done.

A few weeks back you mentioned an ever increasing read list in your Pocket app. Well, maybe my pick can help here:
It is a Chrome extention called “Sprint Reader”, and it is an implementation of a fast-reading technique called RSVP – rapid serial visual presentation. In a nutshell, it flashes words in your view in rapid succession without you having to move your eyes. This allows for reading speeds of 600 words per minute and beyond. (Typical reading speeds is about 150-200, 300 for really fast readers). The way this works is by eliminating the limiting factor, which is movement of the eyes and re-focussing on the text.
Developer Anthony Nosek just updated Sprint Reader to 2.1 today*, so I thought I’d mention it. The code is also openly available on GitHub.
I got hooked on the idea of RSVP after I discovered Spritz ( spritzinc.com ) back in march, which sadly is a proprietary API, and was no product yet. Since then, I had a look on every single RSVP app I could find and found Sprint Reader to not only be free, but the best of the bunch.

I hope this helps you and your listeners to better cope with an ever increasing amount of interesting reads on the web.
Greetings to Jennie and guest, Thanks for the show, and keep it going strong.
Franz Reischl from Austria
(Patron of the show)

* Disclaimer: The update includes a fix from myself. To be exact, my first ever contribution to an open-source project. So I might be a bit biased when I say it’s the best, but I use it for way longer than that now.

Here’s my pick of the day, Pushbullet. It is a very simple yet powerful app that basically lets you send information from one device to another very easily. You can use it to send notes, links, or even files. I use it all the time to send links from my computer to my phone (map directions, recipes, etc.)

It also has the ability on Android (not sure about iOS) to mirror notifications which I use on my desktop to see what the notifications are on my phone. Handy because for instance I can see who’s calling on my laptop and know if I need to run to pick up my phone in the bedroom.

Finally, I don’t use this feature but it integrates with IFTT or Tasker for even more uses.

All in all, it’s an app I use all the time and don’t know how I managed without it. It’s available for Android and iOS, as well as Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera. There’s a beta app for Windows and an app for OSX is coming soon. The developer is great and is constantly putting out new features and updates as needed.

On Monday’s DTNS #2381 Paul wrote in with his pick, Name Changer, for renaming files on the Mac. So Dan from San Antonio thought he’d add a pick for a file renamer for Windows.

“I have been using Rename Master from joejoesoft.com

It’s a free program as well. You can do sequential numbering of files, insert or remove characters based on position, find and replace, etc. The interface is easy to use. It’s been around for at least 4 years and is updated semi-regularly as needed.

Bill added:

I’ve used the Bulk Rename Utility for years – http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php.

It almost suffers from too many options – very powerful. It’s free but worth a donation (at least to me).

—

and lbutler uses a free piece of software for OS X, windows, and Linuxcalled sick beard which scans all of your media files like TV series or movies and has a feature where it will rename them in such a way that Plex understands them.

Hey Tom & Jennie,
hope all is well and I wish you both a wonderful holiday season. I’m glad things are working well for you guys and look forward to another year of DTNS.

I know most of your apps are technologically based but I have a penchant for drinking beer and had a great app to share. I have used the app the past couple of years to find, track, rate brews and see what my friends are drinking. Plus it has a gamification element to earn badges for types of beers and/or places to drink. The folks keep making updates and adding new badges to keep things interesting and find it an integral tool to finding my next cold one. Obviously this isn’t for everyone but I love seeing what my friends recommend and trying to stay ahead of said friends in tallying badges.

Paul from New York was running Plex as his media server and loved it but ran into a tricky problem that led to today’s pick from him: He says, “The PLEX Server wanted my video files to follow a very specific naming convention, and faced with hours of work manually renaming hundreds of files, I began to look for a better solution. Thus my pick-of-the-day suggestion is a wonderful app for the Mac that I found called “Name Changer” from MRR Software:
This very simple piece of software has multiple options for renaming groups of files, from sequential numbering to pattern matching to full “Regular Expression” support in a clean intuitive interface. Although available for free, given the hours of effort it saved me, I was happy to make the $10 suggested donation at the author’s website.

If anyone is faced with a similar task of renaming multiple files, I would highly recommend it.”

On Tuesday’s podcast, Justin asked whether the day’s pick, Junecloud, could scan your inbox the way TripIt does and automatically add packages to track. I’ve never used Junecloud, but my go-to package-tracking app of choice, Slice, does just that. In my experience it does a fairly good job of it (though it occasionally creates duplicates, especially for eBay orders that generate emails from both eBay and PayPal). It also does a fairly good job of finding a photo for each item you’ve ordered, letting you easily scan all your orders in a more visual way. There’s both an Android and iOS app, in addition to the website. You can find it all at slice.com.

AND

I am currently using slice.com which is pretty good. My biggest complaint is that it doesn’t pick up amazon tracking numbers because amazon doesn’t send those in email, only a link to their tracking page. Slice is still able to key off of the estimated delivery date in the confirmation email so it does a pretty good job.

I used to use https://www.packagetrackr.com/ I don’t remember why I left. Just another example if people want to try it.

You were talking about the Nokia Z-Launcher ( I guess it was on November 18) and talked about how it has this feature where you can start writing the name of the app you are looking for and it gives you a list of the apps that match what you are writing. Google has an app that does just that. The app is named Gesture Search and it is a black screen that gives you a list of apps and contacts based on what you are writing. I’ve been using it for a couple years now without any problems. I don’t know why this app is not more known.

My pick of the day is the Android App MightyText. The app is similar to iMessage in that it allows Android users to send text messages from their tablet and computer (through a chrome extension) keeping me from switching to my phone whenever I am using my other devices.

The app also has neat features like: telling you your phone’s battery life, contacts, scheduling future messages, and you can dial from one of the other apps.

I wanted to tell you about an app I just discovered today called Deliveries by Junecloud. It’s a package tracking solution that has apps for iOS and OSX and makes tracking your shipped packages painless. It breaks down the ETA for each package, and even sends notifications if there is a change to your scheduled delivery date. The app for iOS costs $4.99 but with that you are able to use almost all of the main shipping outlets like UPS, USPS, Canada Post etc, and it even lets you forward confirmation emails to automatically add tracking information to the app. They just added a Widget to the Today screen as well so you don’t even have to open the app. I will be using this alot in the coming weeks for my many amazon purchases and hopefully fellow DTNS listeners can do the same.
Jamie in beautiful BC

Hi Tom! One of your many, many bosses here 😉 I’d like to suggest a YouTube channel as a daily pick. I’ve been watching (and supporting on Patreon) LazyGameReviews for quite some time now.
He’s not just another YouTube video game reviewer. Along with reviewing classic, obscure PC games, he has many videos discussing collecting of classic PC games, videos about strange, classic PC peripherals (or as he calls them “Oddware”), and most recently (and what made me think of you!) a show about tech history, the first being about the Osborne and the most recent being about Digital Research. Keep up the great work. Thanks for making my daily commute more bearable!

Love the show! I am a web developer constantly connecting to different servers to update configuration files, read logs, or just make sure certain services are running. Also we have many different versions of our code (production, staging, testing) and keeping track of ip addresses and username/passwords can be tough, until I found shuttle ( http://fitztrev.github.io/shuttle/ ).

This is a Mac only program that sits in the menubar and allows you to group servers, name them, and have different parameters when connecting to them. It has made things so much easier. Also all the code is on github so you can see how it works and contribute to the code if you’d like.

Cartoon conspiracy theories, conspiracy theories from your favorite cartoons when you were a kid!

Like was sponge bob squarepants and friends created from a weapon bomb testing to did the flintstones and jetsons live at the same time period ? This series goes over the facts, to find out the truth, even from the writers / creators themselves

Technosquid sent us this one: “My pick is the new Brandon Sanderson audiobook, Legion: Skin Deep, available free for pre-order on audible.com, set for release on November 24th. Legion: Skin Deep is the sequel to Legion, a novella which gained some popularity when it was available free to purchase from audible for a month or two back in 2012 (now $4.86 for audible subscribers, $6.95 for non subscribers, or $2.99 kindle + $1.99 whispersync for audio audible add-on.)

“Stephen Leeds, AKA ‘Legion,’ is a man whose unique mental condition allows him to generate a multitude of personae: hallucinatory entities with a wide variety of personal characteristics and a vast array of highly specialized skills.”

I really liked the original, although it was only a short two-hour reading of a 96 page story, but thankfully the sequel is more than twice as long.

In a blog post, the author noted that this is a limited-time promotion, and after one month it would no longer be available for free, but of course anyone who purchased it during the promotion would have it available in their audible libraries.”

Check out Bomgar.com for the best in enterprise remote desktop support for nearly every platform. It’s simple, intuitive, comprehensive, and full featured. It’s available for hosted or managed and can be virtual or appliance based.

I’m obsessive about browser tabs. I keep many tabs open in several instances of Chrome all the time and I like to have them in a particular order. I have found the Recent Tabs selection in Chrome to be unreliable. Several weeks ago, Allyn Malventano of PC Perspective gave this as his tip. It’s a Chrome extension called One Tab. I have been using One Tab since then.

My pick is myfav.es I use it for my browser start screen on our Win7 HTPC with Logitech K400 to make life easier for my wife. She’s been happy with it, so I’ve never ventured to anything like Plex or XBMC.

Andrew from epic Portland here and I want to recommend the reddit app Alien Blue for iOS. It’s got a ton of different features but the things that make it stand out the most to me are how it manages your subreddits and how easy it is to share a post. I definitely think that any redditor that has an iOS device needs this app. Thank you to everyone at DTNS for a great podcast keep up the amazing work.

Hi Tom,
You said your Pocket is full of articles you wanted to read, but never got a chance to go over them. It happens. But you may want to try the TTS feature of Pocket and then you can listen to them whenever you are unable to read. Thanks for the show. Love it!
Rolando
– your fan from Paraguay

krvhill: Charity season is here and I wanted to pick my favorite “desert bus for hope” https://desertbus.org a comedy troupe playing the world’s most boring videogame for child’s play charity. It is in its eighth year and keeps getting bigger. If you prefer different games check the schedule at http://www.childsplaycharity.org to see a list of other webathons coming in the next months.

I’m sure almost everyone who listens to the show has bought something from Amazon.com or shops from there regularly. Here’s something that will make your Amazon shopping experience a little more generous. A few months ago I discovered that Amazon has a program called AmazonSmile. To get to it, instead of going to www.amazon.com you go to smile.amazon.com, there’s even a Google Chrome extension called Smile Always that will always redirect you to the smile version of the Amazon.com webpage. When you shop on AmazonSmile, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the money you spent to the charity of your choice. You select this charity when you first visit AmazonSmile and can change it whenever you want. Almost every major charity you can think of is on there as well as many local charities. Organizations can register to receive donations through AmazonSmile on org.amazon.com. Obviously 0.5% is not a lot of money, but if you already donate to charity or if you can’t afford to, this is a nice option that costs you nothing.

I’ve been using Windows 8 from the beginning and I’ve found myself impressed with the innovative GUI and more pleased with each refinement.

That said, my pick isn’t Windows 8, but Chrome for the Windows 8 interface. Chrome started as just the browser last year, but is now a great port of Chrome OS and works well with a touch interface, like my Surface 3. By default, Chrome launches in the traditional desktop, but when you go to the menu bar and relaunch in Windows 8 interface, it switches over, so it’s kind of tricky to find

It’s not a new app, but I was pleasantly surprised when I found out how Google is adapting to Windows brave new interface and it’s now my default.

you and ek talking about nostalgia regarding archive.org and video games made me think of a recent purchase i made:

http://www.clickykeyboards.com/index.cfm

http://www.pckeyboard.com/

I bought a clicky keyboard from the latter (because i have a mac) and it plugged and played to perfection. while i guess i like the current keyboards that are noiseless…there’s something about a clicky keyboard that gives me the immediate feedback and nostalgia that makes writing more fluid.

they are bit pricey i’ll admit…but i love mine. customer service is awesome.

I wanted to suggest a pick of day for the show.
I listen to a lot of podcasts, and have been following the Serial podcast since it came out. For those of you not familiar with what has become a phenomenon, Serial is a podcast from the creators of This American Life, which follows one true story over the course of a whole season.

For any of you listeners who haven’t heard it yet, I urge you all to check it out. It’s utterly addictive and perfect for binge listening.

Webstock – an amazing conference in New Zealand every year- but mentioning it for a video from Peter Sunde a few years ago, where he talked about the motivation behind the Pirate Bay. Well worth watching

I wanted to mention Bluetooth Multipoint as my pick today since it’s a good feature with such a generic and un-google-able name that nobody cares to notice 😉

Multipoint Bluetooth headphones can pair with more than one device at the same time.

I love listening to audio podcasts on my phone and watching video podcasts on the laptop on my bus commute. Before getting Multipoint headphones, it used to take sometimes up to a few minutes to unpair and re-pair every time I switch devices. Now my Multipoint Bluetooth headphones will play the audio from whichever device I’m using.

The model I’m using is LG HBS730 but I believe other ones work the same way, too.

One more thing. One of the most useful features of smart watches is the playback control and most people don’t seem to talk about it. I have a Pebble and I can play, pause, and skip backward/forward without touching my phone (just like with a Bluetooth headset). Have you noticed, on the most rough section of the freeway, every “tap” on the phone screen becomes a “swipe” and you can never press the pause and skip buttons? 😉 I don’t have that problem with my Pebble.

Cheers,
Komei from “nothing really goes on but a chill place to live” Fremont

With NaNoWriMo starting this weekend, I know you are getting several picks for writing apps. I’d like to add one more. Scrivener has a NaNoWriMo special. Instead of the usual 30 day demo, you can download a demo that will expire on December 7th giving you enough time to finish your novel. Also if you are a winner, 50,000 word written, you get a code to buy Scrivener for 50% off. If you don’t hit the 50K word goal there is a code for 20% off. This is for both the Windows and Mac versions.

Love the show. I had the chance to see to see a screening of the documentary Alive Inside the other night and they mentioned that it is now available on Netflix, so I thought the DTNS community might find it interesting. It’s a film that highlights the power of technology and music to make a difference in our lives, by highlighting a nonprofit using mp3 players to connect with individuals with Alzheimer’s. Great story and great cause.

One of my blind listeners asked if there was a way to move the cursor on a Mac by a specific distance on screen. Slau said that sometimes there’s an unlabeled element on screen that he needs to click, and if someone else could tell him where it was relative to a labeled element AND he could move the cursor by precise increments, he could get to the unlabeled element.

So…Dorothy wrote him an application to do it! She’s packaged it up pretty nice, and I did a blog post on it so there’s a link for download.

For the last couple weeks, as I’ve been gearing up for NaNoWriMo, I’ve been using a free Android app called Writeometer. It’s primary function is to allow writers to track their word count progress. It can track several projects at once. In addition to that, it adds a bunch of other features such as a timer, a reward system, motivational quotes, a dictionary, thesaurus, and word-of-the-day function with WordNik as the backend. I’ve been very pleased with it, and it’s become the Swiss Army knife of my writing tools.

I believe one of the most exciting things to come out of that endeavor is on{x}.

It can best be described as Tasker on steroids. Using javascript you can make your Android phone react to certain situations.
Just got home? Text someone.
Geolocation near anything matching the bing search “Science museum”, get a notification.

If you can code it, it works.

I used it when I had an android phone. Now I have a Lumia 930, and the sucker is more locked down than an iPhone.

Love the show.
From wet, cold and currently sucky, Trondheim Norway.

Christian W.

11/3/2014 Bluetooth Multipoint Devices via Komei in Fremont

I wanted to mention Bluetooth Multipoint as my pick today since it’s a good feature with such a generic and un-google-able name that nobody cares to notice 😉

Multipoint Bluetooth headphones can pair with more than one device at the same time.

I love listening to audio podcasts on my phone and watching video podcasts on the laptop on my bus commute. Before getting Multipoint headphones, it used to take sometimes up to a few minutes to unpair and re-pair every time I switch devices. Now my Multipoint Bluetooth headphones will play the audio from whichever device I’m using.

The model I’m using is LG HBS730 but I believe other ones work the same way, too.

One more thing. One of the most useful features of smart watches is the playback control and most people don’t seem to talk about it. I have a Pebble and I can play, pause, and skip backward/forward without touching my phone (just like with a Bluetooth headset). Have you noticed, on the most rough section of the freeway, every “tap” on the phone screen becomes a “swipe” and you can never press the pause and skip buttons? 😉 I don’t have that problem with my Pebble.

Cheers,
Komei from “nothing really goes on but a chill place to live” Fremont

With NaNoWriMo starting this weekend, I know you are getting several picks for writing apps. I’d like to add one more. Scrivener has a NaNoWriMo special. Instead of the usual 30 day demo, you can download a demo that will expire on December 7th giving you enough time to finish your novel. Also if you are a winner, 50,000 word written, you get a code to buy Scrivener for 50% off. If you don’t hit the 50K word goal there is a code for 20% off. This is for both the Windows and Mac versions.

Love the show. I had the chance to see to see a screening of the documentary Alive Inside the other night and they mentioned that it is now available on Netflix, so I thought the DTNS community might find it interesting. It’s a film that highlights the power of technology and music to make a difference in our lives, by highlighting a nonprofit using mp3 players to connect with individuals with Alzheimer’s. Great story and great cause.

One of my blind listeners asked if there was a way to move the cursor on a Mac by a specific distance on screen. Slau said that sometimes there’s an unlabeled element on screen that he needs to click, and if someone else could tell him where it was relative to a labeled element AND he could move the cursor by precise increments, he could get to the unlabeled element.

So…Dorothy wrote him an application to do it! She calls it MoveMouse and she’s packaged it up pretty nice,

For the last couple weeks, as I’ve been gearing up for NaNoWriMo, I’ve been using a free Android app called Writeometer. It’s primary function is to allow writers to track their word count progress. It can track several projects at once. In addition to that, it adds a bunch of other features such as a timer, a reward system, motivational quotes, a dictionary, thesaurus, and word-of-the-day function with WordNik as the backend. I’ve been very pleased with it, and it’s become the Swiss Army knife of my writing tools.

I believe one of the most exciting things to come out of that endeavor is on{x}.

It can best be described as Tasker on steroids. Using javascript you can make your Android phone react to certain situations.
Just got home? Text someone.
Geolocation near anything matching the bing search “Science museum”, get a notification. If you can code it, it works.

I used it when I had an android phone. Now I have a Lumia 930, and the sucker is more locked down than an iPhone.

Just wanted to turn you onto an audio recording application I just learned about a couple of months ago: Presonus Studio One.

It’s a professional DAW (digital audio workstation) for both Windows and Mac, and comes in a variety of paid versions starting at $99.95, but the version that I’m most excited about is the FREE version! For 30 days, you can try out the Professional version which costs $399 (still cheaper than ProTools and comes with the Melodyne tuning plug-in and a mastering suite!), but after 30 days, it becomes a more limited free version, that is still quite functional!

I’ve been using the free Audacity program for years, but I have always wished it could do live effects processing, but unfortunately it can’t. I have also used GarageBand, but it has its own limitations as well, namely 24-bit recording at 44.1 khz.

Studio One Free lets you record unlimited tracks, with higher bit rates and sample rates (if your interface supports them) and it includes 9 plug-in effects. The only thing missing from the free version that I wish it had, is a compressor and gate, but it’s still pretty darn good without it, especially for free!

Tom I agree with your skepticism about using a tool like Authy that syncs your 2nd factor authentication keys between machines. Security and convenience are always at odds, and in this case we don’t know enough about how Authy works to trust them blindly.

I personally use Gauth Authenticator as a chrome extension (there’s a Firefox one available also). It’s open source with a public repo on github. It stores your key data locally, so only you have it. I also like to backup the text version of my 2nd factor keys in LastPass in the notes section under each accounts record. Thanks for a wonderful, and insightful podcast.

I know I’m a little late on this, but I’m just catching up on the podcasts this week. I wouldn’t normally dredge up stories mentioned six days ago. However, I’ve been in search of the best HTPC solution for almost a decade. I’ve tried and owned everything, Roku, Apple TV, Google TV, Chromecast, and of course simply hooking my PC up to my TV. The BEST solution though came in unlikely package, it was a Raspberry Pi with XMBC. Obviously a PC is the best solution, but computers are big, loud, hot, and expensive and when it comes to the UI it can be a bit clunky. The Raspberry Pi w/ XMBC (RaspBMC is the official name) gives you all the power and ports you need in an affordable package. I’ve got a Panasonic Viera smart TV’s in the house, so you simply hook the Pi to the TV via HDMI, and it automatically integrates with the TV remote. It’s a little long winded but this video goes into all the details:

This is my first time writing in, but I just had to share this solution because I never hear it mentioned and it’s so incredibly brilliant. You can run 1080p video, with all the features of XMBC, all from an affordable Raspberry Pi that has such a tiny footprint. Hope you find this as interesting as I did.

I was listening to your story yesterday about the leaked Dropbox accounts and I was wondering if you have ever used or heard of Boxcryptor?

Its a 3rd party app that encrypts your files locally before sending them to what ever cloud storage service you use (DropBox, Google Drive, Box etc…) I use it on my windows 7 laptop, Blackberry 10 smartphone and Android tablet. I enjoy the piece of mind knowing that even if my cloud storage account is hacked, all my files are encrypted.

I highly recommend a recent article from Anandtech: An Introduction to Semiconductor Physics, Technology, and Industry by Joshua Ho. It’s a really great primer, not overly simplified, but relatively understandable to someone (like myself) who’s physics and chemistry education finished in high school, but has an interest in how tech works. Anandtech is usually my go-to place for more in-depth technical analysis and reviews, but I thought this really stood out as excellent.

I developed a problem with my android phone telling me, “Temporary server error, please try again later.” To isolate the app that is causing the problem I am using NoRoot Firewall. Every app that is calling home is easily identified. I’m surprised by a few and the will be uninstalling them now. Since it has been so easy and useful, I thought I’d share it.

On Monday’s show you discussed attaching pc’s to televisions and the problems controlling them with wireless mice/keyboards. My pick, Splashtop, is a free remote desktop app that makes controlling your computer with your mobile device easy. Splashtop consists of an app you install on your tablet and a streamer program you install on your mac or pc. Some features are:

You can control your old XP pc using new touch gestures on your tablet. No more trying to use a mouse while in a Lazy Boy. No more having the giant wireless keyboard laying around the living room.

If your mobile device doesn’t run Flash, you can still view Flash web pages by running them on your pc and streaming them to your mobile device.

Splashtop allows you to mute the sound on the pc and listen via your mobile device. This way you can plug in head phones watch without annoying anyone else in the room. It works like the Roku 3 remote with head phone jack.

Not sure how well it would work on a phone, unless you have really small fingers. It might be hard to control your computer on a smaller screen. Works fine on my Nexus 7 and would probably work even better on a 10 inch tablet.

If there is an app that does upload data that you wish not to be shared whether it be for privacy reasons or for security reasons and happen to use Mac OS X Little Snitch is a great way to eliminate that problem all together. With Little Snitch you can set what apps have access to the internet (incoming/outgoing or both) and what can’t. I find this to be a great tool and very useful.

Telegram is a very lightweight instant messenger app that not only supports copy and pasting images and uploading of documents, but it is very secure (since it uses the MTProto protocol) and it simply requires only a mobile phone number and a unique code given to you via SMS for each device you set it up on. What’s even more awesome is that it integrates with your contacts on mobile platforms.

It is available for almost every phone/tablet platform (iOS/Android/Windows) as well as a very stable (yet unofficial) desktop application.

First off I wanted to say, I’m addicted to the Daily Tech News Show, it is now one of my favourite podcasts to listen to. My pick of the day is the app called Sight. It is an awesome app, it works almost like Pocket or Instapaper but all you have to do is take a screenshot of the article you are reading and boom, you can read it later on. The developer just recently updated the app, so it take advantage of iOS 8’s extensions, so you can still save stuff to read it later (and offline). Did I mention that it is a free app? because it is. The only downside is that it is available for iOS only but you can view your saved stuff on their web interface.

Important for developers allowing Reddit browsing in a more discrete fashion, all of course, on company time.

“Omni Mono” in the chatroom

10/2/2014: 2 wifi picks from Matthew Bowen

2 Wifi related picks, 1 hardware & 1 software:Open-Mesh
AFFORDABLE wireless access points all controlled from a central web login. (Like Meraki) Access points start at $55 with very affordable POE injectors. Now pretty much anyone can afford to have a professional level wireless network with a single SSID and seamless handoffs from one AP to the next.

Instabridge: Available for Android, iOS, Windows, & Mac, Instabridge allows you share wireless networks without sharing the passwords. If you change the password in the app everyone you have shared that password with gets updated. They never see the password, so you can also revoke anyone at any time! It is also great for sharing public WiFi. First time to a bar or restaurant? If another Instabridge user has shared it then you can automatically connect. The devs are extremely responsive and are a joy to give feedback.

Like many of your listeners I am interested in the tech of podcasting itself, both as an aspiring podcaster and also out of technology interest. You host at archive.org. Not an obvious choice one hears about often. Could you use archive.org as a pick sometime and go through why you use it? Love the show. Keep going!

Dave Popovich of Stuart, Florida writes: Wanted to share a product that has saved me lots of medical bills. Being a network administrator for 500 users in 9 locations, you can guess I spend a lot of time at my computer using my mouse. And that meant I would drive home after work, and massage my right forearm because of the dull ache of the carpal tunnel pain.

I don’t remember how I discovered this product, but it has really made a difference – the Evoluent vertical mouse at http://Evoluent.com. I have been using the regular size, right handed, wired versions for years now, at home and at work and have no more wrist pain! It works by turning your hand 90 degrees so you rest your arm on the outside bones and not the soft tissue of the inside arm. They also make smaller mice and left-handed mice!

Only caveats: with years of training to use a mouse one way, you are a bit less accurate at first using the vertical mouse. just takes a little practice. Also, the mouse has LOTS of extra buttons, which I found got in the way, but just go into the driver and set those trouble buttons to not do anything.

It really has changed my life and many vendors and computer service folks are very interested when they see it on my desk.

Jennie adds that the mouse also has bluetooth, and works with Windows and Apple computers, but has more limited functionality on Unix, Linux and VMWare.

My pick is SpeedCrunch. As a game programmer and CS graduate student, I need a quick, straight forward, and simple calculator with some power behind it. Enter SpeedCrunch. It is a calculator that is completely controlled by your keyboard ( similar to command-line ) which supports user defined variables, a multitude of math functions, and comes with a table of scientific constants. It shows history, lets you retrieve previously entered equations, and my favorite feature is as you type in an equation, it will have a little pop-up with the current answer to the equation. This is very useful when I am adding up a lot of numbers and want to see the current total. It works for Windows and OSX and has a portable Windows version. I also believe the program is open source for anyone who wants to modify or look at the code.

Today we have possibly the shortest recommendation we’ve ever received from Rob Jennings. And I quote: “Lootcrate.com a subscription services for monthly swag . It has different levels of boxes.” To elaborate just a bit: If you sign up for Lootcrate.com, they will send you a themed mystery box with a retail value of $40 or more. In August the theme was ‘HEROES’ and included a Groot Bobblehead, some mini ninja turtles, and a pair of Shwings (that’s wings for shoes) among many other things. The monthly plan costs $13.37/mo + $6 shipping and handling. Sign up for more months at a time and get a discount. Every month one lootcrater wins a megacrate, with $750 worth of stuff.

If iPhone and iPad users want to get taste of Android’s upcoming Material Design aesthetic, and get a great news app, they can try out Google Play Newstand which was released in the App Store today. This replaces its older Currents, and is a huge improvement. You can select which categories of news you want, and can customize the sources feeding into it. For me, it has replaced Feedly altogether and I am also using Flipboard a lot less as well. This is one Google App that works well as a stand-alone even if you are not into the Google ecosystem. Fast and nicely designed.

As someone who will soon be moving into an area that has Comcast as the ONLY option for cable I figured I would attempt to cut the cord (more or less). I have a pc hooked to my living room tv and am one of those digital hoarders with a 4tb external drive nearly filled with movies and tv shows (mostly ripped from my own personal collection because honestly who has space for almost 600 dvds in their living room anymore?). My wife and I would stare at a list of movies on the tv and usually end up switching back to cable watching a censored and cut up version of something we already own on DVD or on the pc. I did a little looking around and found an add on for XBMC called PseudoTV Live where you can set up your own “channels” and flip through your own local content as well as online content (The add on comes with a few dozen RSS feeds set as channels including a TWIT channel as well as a Scam School one). The add on has a built in channel guide and is almost indistinguishable from a real cable system and although it can be somewhat frustrating to set up once you get it working properly (I consider myself a semi above average computer user and still rage uninstalled the thing more than a couple of times) it becomes a very viable alternative to cable, I have had it set up and working properly for a couple of weeks now and my wife and I have not turned back to cable since (except to watch Da Bears stomp on the 49ers last Sunday).

I bought Knowroaming when it was first announced (on Indigogo I think) but had the occasion to use it only last week-end. And now I think it’s the best tool for travelling with your phone!
-Good rates anywhere for voice/messages/data
-No need to think about it in advance; you arrive at destination and install the profile and it works. You get back home, you remove the profile and it’s done.
-Switches to the strongest network
-Easy to use app and website where you buy credits. That also mean you cannot spend more than you planned without knowing.
Only drawback for some; it requires an unlocked phone.

For those with locked phones, Kayo has another option: “I used xcomglobal in Vancouver and it worked great. It was about $15 per day which sounds pricey but it was the same price as hotel wifi, and all of our phones were locked so we couldn’t rent a SIM card anyway. I took a portable battery with me so my family and I had access to the internet all day. I was so happy that when I sent along a thank you post-it with the returned device, they wrote back and gave me a 10% coupon code (embarrassingly, it’s ‘kayolovesxcom’) to share with others. It’s good for a year from June. (I don’t get a kickback for that and I don’t work for this company, btw.)

In Japan, I used a similar service from Global Advanced Communications and that worked really well too. Their coverage was good and the speed was faster than my Comcast connection at home. My brother recently used his free T-mobile 2G roaming plan in the Tokyo area and he was pleased with it as well. Hope that helps!

You where talking about prepaid sims and other international data options. I was doing some research the other day and found a 3G hotspot solution that cost $10 a day for unlimited data and supported in over 40 countries. The service is called skyroam at www.skyroam.com might be worth taking a look at for the data hog on the go.

Derrick writes: “I wanted to also throw out Tep Wireless as another option when travelling abroad. They offer 3G mobile hotspots and cover a good portion of the world. I always use it on my trips to Europe, paying about $6-7 for 150MB/day (unused data is rolled over). They can ship it or you can pick/drop off at airports so it’s really convenient. It’s a great option if you don’t need phone/SMS and only need data. Plus you can attach as many devices as you want to it.

Your public library has audio books and ebooks for free. Just go in to the library and sign up. They give you credentials and voila you have access to countless books. My local library is part of the OverDrive lending system. It works great for me.

Asana.com is a project management online platform meant for companies to work through projects, collaborate, and organize. The creators of Asana are Dustin Moskovitz(Co founder of Facebook) and Justin Rosenstein. Now I do not use this for work but rather all the projects I have being a home owner and car enthusiast . When doing a full restoration on my Datsun I can keep track of progress, ordering of parts, and completed tasks. The best part about Asana is its free. Just login and start a project.

Usually the pick of the day is a piece of tech,an app or website. But I’d like to suggest a documentary that appealed to me as a geek. Tim’s Vermeer” follows inventor Tim Jenison as he attempts to discover and recreate the technology which may account for the ability of Johannes Vermeer to create paintings with stunning color accuracy. Art and Technology are shown as complementary disciplines, and not apposing forces. It’s a wonderful ride. It’s available on all the usual rental sites (iTunes, Google Play, Vudu).

followmy.tv helps you keep track of all your TV shows and in particular what episode you are up to. Netflix, Hulu & Amazon does this well already but if you are watching on network & cable television as well as downloading you need somewhere to keep track of what episode you are up to. followmy.tv does it all in one place with a very handy dashboard that has all the next to be watched episodes of TV shows you are watching.

With the power of always knowing which episode you are up to in a TV show you can plan your own TV schedule with ease.

Honourable mention goes to Trakt @ https://trakt.tv but I much prefer followmy.tv

Preston in only OK Silly-con Valley has our pick of the day: “I just wanted to throw in a pick of the day for Randall Munroe’s new book “What if?”. Although I haven’t read it yet I have read all his entries at his site what-if.xkcd.com and really enjoyed them all. Randall tackles absurd hypothetical questions such as “What if there was a robot apocalypse? How long would humanity last?” and “Has humanity produced enough paint to cover the entire land area of the Earth?” using science, logic and humor. Ever wonder if you could lift yourself in the air with guns Yosemite Sam style? The answer is in here. (The answer is yes, but don’t try it at home.)

Michael Hand (the now-producer of Tekzilla among other things) here with a pick of the day. Recently on Tekzilla we interviewed the founder of plot.ly, a site that makes it easy to graph and visualize any sort of data. This website is great if you want make sense of a pile of numbers in the easiest way possible. You can copy and paste data directly to the website or use their APIs with a handful of different programming languages. Switch between bar graphs, scatter plots, histograms, heat maps, and way more with a few clicks…I’m really into it!

I personally use it to graph Tekzilla download stats and even plot out bathroom usage data for the office restrooms (long story, see DIY Tryin’ or bathroomstatus.com).

Plot.ly is free for unlimited public graphs and 50 private graphs. Definitely check it out if you are a data geek like me!

Listening to your DragonCon discussion of the potential risks of AI brought to mind a daily comic strip I follow, Questionable Content.

A slice-of-life comic set in an alternate-universe present-day Northampton, Massachussetts where self-aware Artificial Intelligence has existed for decades and AIs live among humans as voluntary cooperative or paid partners and companions, Jeph Jacques’ QC follows the lives of slacker twenty-something Marten Reed and his friends, family and acquaintances.
I really love the way the strip treats the many variants of AI as commonplace, integrating them into a world that is very like the one we already live in.

If you start from the beginning of the archive, you can see the development of Jacques’ drawing style; but it’s clear that his world was pretty fully formed as a concept from the beginning. Jacques has also re-drawn the whole story in his fully-developed art style, and collected it into a book. Either way you get to it, well worth your time.

Hello Tom and Jennie: You’re all are doing great and love the show! I know many hate or dislike their mobile carrier bill, so my pick is ting.com. I used to be on Sprint (I still am if you want to be technical) and paid $80+ a month. I grew tired of paying for services I didn’t use much like data and SMS due to always being on wifi and that I use google Voice for my SMS. I only pay $15 a month. Ever since I switched to ting.com I have saved over $900. Of coarse mileage will very for some but they say the average annual savings per device is $440. To help those who are interested get started they can get a $25 Gift credit with phone activation using this promo. https://zk3aba150f2.ting.com/

After hearing a while back about Luke Pohr’s pick Package Buddy I wanted to add my pick for tracking purchases, SLICE.COM. Slice builds on Package Buddy by automating tracking and putting all your purchase and tracking info in one app. It scrapes your email to give you a purchase history and can give you notifications for items shipping, out for delivery, and delivered. Slice also helps you track all your online purchasing habits. Once I signed up it gave me my entire online purchasing history since I first began ordering online, 8 years worth!

I’ve using Outlook since the 90s–a critical component of my workflow was an easy wireless way to sync desktop and phone for contacts and calendar. The magic was accomplished then by Nokia Suite through bluetooth. When modern smartphones became a thing, a new component (“the cloud”) was needed in the mix. So I used Google Calendar Sync and a little great desktop app called Go Contact Sync Mod to have Outlook-Cloud-Phone two-way wireless sync nirvana: my contacts, appointments and notes were available to me in my desktop, phone or cloud in perfect harmony. But the Microsoft-Google fight has gotten in the way of my sync heaven, first by stopping support for Exchange ActiveSync and then Google Calendar Sync. Luckily, the wonderful guys of Go Contact Sync Mod came to the rescue by updating their app and providing 2-way sync (Outlook-Google) for Calendar, Contacts, Notes. Best of all, it’s free and opensource. Finally, my workflow equilibrium has been restored.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a CCG (collectible card game a la Magic: The Gathering) from Blizzard Entertainment featuring characters from the WoW universe. As someone who never played WoW, on it’s face, it didn’t sound that interesting, but, as someone who played a little Magic back in the day, the second I loaded this onto my iPad, I was hooked. You can play your friends or random people in friendly matches, ranked matches or an arena mode where you draft a deck and then play it on the spot. The game is packed with excellent graphics, animations and music; ever-expanding content; and a vast and active community. The game is free to play with in-app purchases (totally not required) and is available for PC, Mac and iPad with Windows 8 and Android tablet support to come in the near future. Too much fun not to pass along.

I would like to suggestion YNAB (You Need a Budget) as a pick. This is a great piece of software, and set of basic rules to assist you in managing your finances. Their software is not cheap at $60, but it is very much worth it. There is a Windows and Mac version for the desktop, and iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire for mobile. The killer feature is Dropbox synchronization. I can be at the grocery store, make my purchase and as I walk out of the store, input the transaction into my mobile device. It immediately updates through Dropbox to any other client, and shows me what the budget for that category was, and what it is now. The company is extremely supportive with numerous live classes to learn the process and software, and a great and helpful online community. I recommend this software to people who need help, and people who don’t. It is a great way to stay on top of your finances, and set great goals for the future.

As you know, I podcast as a hobby, and like many people in the business world, I’m on Skype and Hangouts daily for conference calls and meetings as part of my day job. I’d like to recommend a Mac utility called Push To Talk. Push to Talk adds a software-driven mute button to your Mac. You can define your own key combination to use, and it mutes your mic input system-wide so you don’t have to go fumbling for the mute button on Skype or Hangouts. You can also configure it so that it only transmits when you hold the keyboard combination you’ve defined, but I find the toggle setting most useful. It’s available in the Mac App Store, and it costs just $0.99. Pro tip: I’ve found that I needed to reboot for the utility to function properly after installing.

I’ve been using this app for awhile now and I swear by it. It’s called Battery Doctor and it frees up memory on your phone. Whenever I launch a game or memory intensive app, I will run this to free up some memory. It’s free and available for iOS and Android phones.

The real reason I’m making this a pick for you however, is a feature they added recently. You are now able to setup a service called One Tap Boost, and after a quick settings profile is setup, it will add a boost icon to your springboard. One tap will now quickly free up memory for you without having to open the main Battery app, and it also closes automatically once you’re done! A great app for those who use several apps throughout the day!

As a Patreon supporter in the UK, I do appreciate the more Global view you have always tried to provide. This e-mail is mainly to recommend the site Friends+Me () which allows me to use Google+ for posting whilst also cross posting to Facebook and Twitter. I only use the free account but Pro-accounts are available. I tend to spend most of my time in G+ and this allows me to share with friends who use the other social networks without having to perform multiple posts. There is a variety of setting on how it should handle images and links and you can also control it by placing hashtags in the Google post.

Wanted to make you aware of this service for all the tech
professionals in the DTNS community. This service by Ninite creates customized installers including various programs that you can select including browsers, runtimes, security and developer tools, and allow you to roll them out over multiple work stations quickly and easily. It will also manage the updates for said applications in the background without bugging the end user. Very useful for IT Pro’s that oversee alot of work stations. Thought I’d let you know, and thanks as always for a solid show!

8/14/2014 Know Your Rights via Producer Jennie & Host Tom

With the ongoing events in Ferguson, Missouri, today seems like a good time to brush up on your rights as a citizen, or as a visitor to the United States, when it comes to matters of law enforcement. Now you may not be in, or anywhere near Ferguson, Missouri. But you might be at conference someday, or at a sporting event where things get out of hand, or holding a computer in a public place at the wrong time. So Producer Jennie, who has had several disappointing run-ins with various law enforcement agencies in her past life as a news producer, would like you to know that the ACLU has a handy booklet entitled “Know Your Rights” which is downloadable at ACLU.org. Producer Jennie would also like to remind you that in a chaotic unfolding situation, the best thing to do is NOT to yell about knowing your rights to a bunch of upset law enforcement officials, but rather to get to safety as quickly as possible.

Hey Tom, I just listened to the episode where you mentioned the need to get a phone mount for your car. Just like you, I was into the concept of dash mounts for years, but none really worked the way I wanted them to, and I’ve tried many. Someone recommended a CD slot mounted… well, mount. And I have to tell you – it has fulfilled all my desires, for under $20. Nobody uses CDs anymore, so why not put the CD slot to good use instead? It’s located in a much more convenient place that’s both closer to you and doesn’t obstruct the view. It’s sturdy and doesn’t move unless you want it to (it does swivel every which way). The mount easily expands to fit a large phablet (my Note 3 and OnePlus One had no issues at all).
The mount is made by Satechi, a company with great history and track record: Just like it already did for many people, it will change your life. It changed mine, and everyone I’ve recommended it to loved it so far.

Producer Jennie has returned from conducting very important business at Disneyland. While she was there she relied heavily on the Mousewait app. If you’re in the US and headed to Disneyworld in Florida or Disneyland & California Adventure in Anaheim, CA, the MouseWait app uses close to real-time data from their dedicated social community to post wait times and fast pass availability for every ride and popular food spots in both parks. The app also features an overall crowd index, a programmable To-Do list and a lively community posting advice. I rigorously field-tested the app, on our past two trips and found it impressively accurate. The app is ad-supported and free, and available on iphone for both parks and on Android just for Disneyland so far. If you want to learn more about it, check out mousewait.com

As a passenger train conductor, I am extensively trained in first aid. But, when an emergency pops up, I like to double check everything I am doing to make sure passengers are getting the best treatment possible. The Red Cross First Aid app is amazing for this purpose. It makes finding emergencies quick and easy right on the home screen and keeps updating for any new techniques that may have been implemented since my last first aid class. It is available for different countries and is free.

My pick is Clipjump, a clipboard manager for Windows that has changed the way that I work (for the better!). It’s easy and intuitive to use in that it uses the usual copy and paste shortcut keys. Now I can copy multiple items that I will need to paste, switch, and paste them sequentially without the need to switch back-and-forth between applications. It also has a feature that will strip the formatting, allowing me to replace PureText, which was a great but single purpose app. I also like that you get a preview of what you’re going to paste. The developer also introduced plug-ins that do stuff like change case. There are also a bunch of other cool features.

Hey Tom and Jennie, love the show. Just discovered pluto.tv – a cool app to watch video online. Over a hundred curated channels in a nicely organized channel guide for that “lean back” experience. Now with chromecast support on Android, this is a nice pick for folks just looking for a variety of queued specialty content online. I can’t speak for the rights clearances or how these channels are legally vetted but I thought it was worth sharing… maybe something of interest for the cordkillers podcast as well.

I just came across this today while researching for a friend. It’s a portable USB battery pack for charging your devices on the go. It packs 11200mAh into its tiny form factor, and you can charge two devices at full speed simultaneously. It supports smartphones, as well as tablets. Best part is the price, only $40! I might be getting one of these for myself, and thought I would share this with you and the listeners of DTNS. Thanks again for an awesome podcast!

I wanted to send in a Pick of the day… but it may be more of a discussion topic since it seems a bit controversial at the moment. The pick would be Keysduplicated.com, a service that lets you make copies of your keys by taking pictures with your phone. I’ve used it several times now to get copies of keys, as well as send copies to AirBnB guests who will be staying at my place. It’s worked great thus far, and has saved me many trips to the hardware store. The service, however, has gotten some mixed press recently. Most of it seems like nightly news “scare-mongering”, but I’d be interested to hear your opinion. At the very least, I think its something your audience should know about.

I know you’ve mentioned it on the show before, but it’s not on the picks page (yet), so I thought I’d mention a recent feature that’s been introduced to LastPass that meant that I finally purchased the premium version – and has turned out to be the best £8 / $12 (annual) I’ve spent on an app. (Of course, the best general $1 per month I spend is being a patron for DTNS!)

The killer feature for me is password completion in Android apps, including Chrome for website logins. I recently got a Nexus 7 and setting it up with all my apps took no time at all because I first installed the LastPass app which filled in all my logins as I went. The mobile app used to have its own browser, so I had to choose between password completion or the functionality of Chrome – but now I can have both.

It’s only on Android for now it seems, and it works by pretending to be an accessibility aid – popping up on screen when a prompt is detected which works well about 95% of the time.

I have been using Bossjock Studio for IOS for about a year now. It is a really nice podcasting app that allows you to mix in music and such as well as export files as mp3 or AACs to various platforms. You can email the files, transfer them to your computer and ftp them to many places. It is a great mobile podcasting platform and I use it a lot with my son for his podcast, the Jonathan Files.

I am a big consumer of ebooks, like a lot of people today, but I often get better deals on books in different stores. You can buy books from places other than the Kindle store, after all. Not to mention free versions of ebooks put online by the author, or the Gutenberg Project, and in different formats. Also, as much as Amazon would like to say different, there are a bunch different e-readers available out there. There are a lot of things to work out, if you decide to go outside just one store experience. I have found Calibre to be super useful in those problems. It is an ebook management software. It can track your library of files, convert them to different formats, and manage which device you have loaded them on. It can even edit your ebooks. It is great software for ebooks in general.

My pick of the day is PopChar (as in ‘character) a little Mac typography utility that helps me quickly insert those little arrows, dingbats, and symbols and so on, onto my web and print designs. It’s Mac only — and while it’s not free (it costs 30 Euros – about 40 dollars), it saves me a s*&^_load of time every day. Been using it for years and it’s rock solid.

If you’re into photography at any level, you usually reach a point where you want a print that’s a step (or more) above what you can get from your desktop photo printer or the machine at […insert name of national chain store here…]. Enter professional photo labs. There are a number of web services but Mpix is the best one I’ve dealt with. You can get all sorts of products from them (photo books, calendars, cards, etc) as well as high quality prints. Their service can also include framing and retouching, all at a very reasonable price. FYI – Mpix is the lab that a lot of professional photographers use as their go-to fulfillment service. Note: I’m not affiliated with them in any way. I’m just a satisfied customer. Jennie also notes they have Android and iOs Apps with ‘Touch to Print’ functionality

Today’s pick of the day comes Rich in Lovely Cleveland, (and it is also a long-time favorite of Producer Jennie’s) Rich says: “I had one pick of the day I wanted to share: Arts & Letters Daily. It’s a great place to go for really intriguing longform content, essays, book reviews and op-eds in general. I’ve long had an RSS feed for most of my more “literate” sources, but I enjoy the curation the site provides, while I don’t read every post they put up, in general I want to. The site could use a design overhaul, its barely better than a mediocre geocities site, but the content is excellent. I recommend for anyone that enjoys a good essay.

5/19/14: YouMail via Jake Lackey from Fresno, CA

I just wanted to suggest a Pick of the day of YouMail for Android and IOS. I have been using YouMail since my first Blackberry phone years ago and I’m pretty surprised i don’t ever hear anybody ever talking about this app. I didn’t want to have to pay the 2.99 a month for visual voice mail from Verizon and started using YouMail which is totally free. YouMail will automatically forward your voice mails to their service which you upload your contacts to and download the app for your phone. Then on our phone you can see a list of who called and play their message from the app, rather than having to play the messages 1 by 1 and wondering who called. You can skip around and only listen to the messages which you think are important. It even has a spam folder for the messages that you don’t ever want to listen to.

You can set up individual voice mail greetings from a list of suggested downloads from the site or use what they call “smart greeting” which will answer the voice mail with, “hello *insert name here*, *user* cant come to the phone right now please leave a message”” like a personal assistant would. Most people who call are shocked that my voice mail knows who is calling me. You can also get transcript for your voice mails and save them as MP3’s and share them. which works great when the doctors office calls and i can just forward the message to my wife, who takes care of that stuff.

I am strictly an Android user and not 100% sure how well it works on iPhone but i know with Android it integrates with the call list and you can play the messages directly from the recent call list on your phone rather than actually opening the app.

You do have to sign up with YouMail at Youmail.com and get an account which is free then you can customize the many different ways you would like your voice mail to be handled. I have unlimited data and not sure how much data this uses on a regular basis but is one of first apps i always download no matter what phone i am using. There is a paid option for this which is only 5 dollars of month which is not required but gives you a ton for features as opposed to the 3 dollars for the Verizon version which gives you nothing extra.

I couldn’t explain everything about this app you will have to just check it out to see how convenient this is. I figured that there are quite a few of your listeners that will get lots of use out of it like i do.

My pick is a site called PCPartPicker. It’s a one-stop shop for people wanting to build their own custom PCs by letting you “build” your PC with a compatibility checker to ensure you don’t mix things up like putting an Intel CPU in a AMD motherboard or cramming a graphics card into a case that can’t fit it. The other killer feature it has is price comparison and history. It compares component prices from popular stores such as Amazon and Newegg in the U.S. and others from 7 different countries. Also, you can generate Reddit Markups to show Redditers your build and ask for help or BBCode for other forums. If you’re going to build a PC, look no further than PCPartPicker.

My pick is called WSUS Offline Update. It’s a tool that uses the
Windows Update features of Windows to download all available updates from Microsoft’s servers for the products you select. After
downloading the files it can make an ISO image or output the files to
a folder for use with a USB drive.

I use it on new builds of computers or VMs so I don’t have to babysit
them while getting them up to date. When you run it on the target
system, there are options for to automatically restart after rebooting to continue the update process. It really saves time when you have a new Windows install and need to do other stuff while it updates.

Ghostery is a web privacy tool that is available as a browser add-on (for most major browsers, anyway) and an iOS app. It blocks all sorts of trackers, beacons and cookies from over 1,900 sources and you can choose to allow or disallow any or all of them with individual granularity as well as whitelisting sites to allow everything from them. You can also choose to allow an item once and then automatically go back to blocking it which is extremely useful when blocking something breaks a site in some way. I’ve first checked it out when i heard Steve Gibson recommend it in 2011 (see Security Now, Ep. 305) and have been using it ever since. I’m not fully in the Tin Foil Hat Brigade but I also don’t necessarily want to have everything I do on the web tracked and sold. There wasn’t a lot of middle ground between being not caring and locking things down so much as to make some sites unusable. Ghostery is exactly the compromise I was looking for.

Luke Pohr has today’s pick: “Hi, Tom and Jennie. My Pick of the Day is Package Buddy. It’s on Android, and what it does is allow you to keep track of shipments of items that are being shipped to your address. All you do is get the tracking number and select the carrier that your shipment is on. Add that info to the app. The app will search for the tracking info for you. Also update you where your shipment is. This is way more convenient than going through your email every single time. I have used this app for years, still do and its great. And best of all its free!”

Ashish Bogawat has our pick of the day: the task list management app Todoist. “With a pretty minimalistic interface, the app can be as simple or complex as you want – no mean feat in this day & age. That it has native clients available for virtually every platform out there, as well as offline mode in the web app is just icing on the cake.”

Tom, as you might guess, my pick is a Google app, but one that tends to fly under the radar despite doing one simple thing very well. Although I am a dedicated Evernote user, I have been finding myself using Keep more and more without any overlap. Whereas Evernote is my digital file cabinet, I use Keep as digital Post-It Notes. It is fast and easy to pull up on a phone or computer to jot down a name, number, create a quick list, or anything that I need to save for later. Then, just like a Post-It Note, that information is usually used and discarded. Anything important enough to keep still goes into Evernote, but I am not cluttering Evernote up with these small, temporary bits and pieces. The Keep interface on Android and iOS is clean, simple and attractive, and there is even a standalone Chrome App for Windows and Mac in addition to the web interface. Since it is free and available on every platform, I encourage folks to give it a go! Vance, from the increasingly hot California desert

We have been using iPads for business for about two and a half years now and the key tool we have found is Goodreader. As there is no native file manager on the iPad you need a way to manage, present and share files. After trying a number of others we have found that Goodreader is the best for what we do. It handles almost any standard file type (PDF, MS Office, video, images, etc.) and allows you to manage and display them in a manner very similar to the typical file manager on the desktop. It populates from cloud services like Dropbox, Box, the Microsoft cloud service and a variety of others. Documents can also be added from email attachments and it links to your email to send documents from the app. One other really nice feature is that it has a fairly robust markup tool for PDF files. We utilize this in meetings quite a bit when the iPad is connected to a projector. It allows for real time markups and speeds the consensus building on projects.

Hey Tom, Fascinated Video Size Guy here. Got a pick for the show that will also solve the confusion for the YouTube video download. My pick is Video DownloadHelper. It’s a free add-on for Firefox and it gives you the ability to download any video on YouTube and other video sites. But wait there’s more!!!! YouTube always stores multiple versions of videos so YT and it’s users can adjust the quality to best match their connection speeds and needs. VDH adds a button that allows you to simply choose which version of the YT video you want to download. I’ve used VDH for many years and can recommend it highly to anyone looking to download YT videos, especially people who produce a daily tech news shows 🙂 Love the show, Fascinated Video Size Guy

Looking to get into some Dogecoins before the DogeCar takes the track at Talladega this weekend? Not sure how to how to navigate crypto exchanges? Have no fear dogeforsale.com is here. It’s a site where users can buy and sell Dogecoins with paypal, google wallet, debit cards, etc. The site is a basic escrow service, it holds the coins during the transaction. Get Dogecoins fast and securely. much speed very secure. DISCLAIMER: I’m a seller on the site — “SkyJedi”

“I love using Dropbox for storing and sharing many of my personal files. However as I work in healthcare I have to be extra careful when it comes to storing and sharing Protected Health Information. I highly recommend ownCloud (owncloud.org) as a private cloud alternative. They have Mac, PC and Linux clients as well as iOS and Android apps. The data is securely stored on our company servers. And best of all it’s open source software. Cheers, Dave (aka DaHa the rare times I get to visit the chat room)

XBoot is a program to create a bootable USB stick from various ISO files. I use mine to load SpinRite, MemCheck, Ubuntu Live and some others. I found it while looking for one by watching this review on Hak5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTQmv2IWe4c. Thanks for the show, Tom and Scott!

Just wanted to pass on a quick pick of the day. I have three kids with iPhones that love listening to music in various locations (work, camping, hiking, etc.). They love to share audio as well and bluetooth speakers can be too pricey to want to risk in some of those situations. Enter the Tadpole bluetooth speaker from iFrogz (www.zagg.com). The Tadpole is a keychain size “speaker” that comes in a variety of colors. The sound is much larger than it’s size would indicate. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the highest quality sound but for the situations above and for only $20, it is well worth the price. it was definitely a hit with my kids and I will be grabbing a couple more. Love the show and thanks for all you do!
Greg in Houston, and of www.gadgets4families.com

It’s a very useful “”email decluttering”” service. It gives you the option to gather all the “”semi-unwanted” emails in a daily summary. You decide which ones go in the summary, and which ones you actually never see again. They all get stored in a specific folder, so you never really lose them. It’s a great way to deal with “bacn,” and has become an indispensable tool in my endless quest for Inbox Zero (which I actually achieve every once in a while).
PS: I believe it only works with Gmail (of course), but seriously, who doesn’t use gmail nowadays? 🙂 Give it a try! Hugs, Patrick Beja”

“My pick is PFsense, if you like DDWRT as a router firmware you will LOVE PFsense. It is a opensource free router software that runs on old hardware AOK. Loaded FULL of enterprise level features and easy configuration. It is able to keep up with my 100 MB internet and high user demands with logging, multiple network segments, Guest network capture portal with vouchers, and so much more. It is overkill for any residential router, but that’s how us geeks roll!

I know Nicole Spag has brought this up before – on TMS I think – but Plex has to be my pick. I’m a cord-cutter from the UK, and Plex on my Mac and Android devices, with Chromecast has really changed my post-work chill-out time. The interface on each device is great, the Chromecast stuff is pretty much flawless, and I can sync shows I want to watch offline to my tablet for watching in the gym. There are some issues with transcoding but I think they’re surmountable and the support community is pretty good.

I’ve really been enjoying DTNS and have been more than happy to kick in my money to Patreon. Thanks to you both.

With love from a fellow podcaster, with next-to-none of your experience but all of your enthusiasm, Mark

I shoot HD video professionally and needed a photo app [on my phone] to shoot a 16 x 9 shape that I can use for HD productions on occasion. Oddly, the native IOS photo app can’t do that. Both ProCam apps work well and can shoot images in the 16 x9 shape.

These apps also help me for personal video productions. They can shoot in a four different file sizes. I love the 720P setting as I feel it is perfect quality for YouTube but saves me 40% or so in file sizes. Both apps are well-designed because they create a digital version of normal camera dials. If you are familiar with running about any camera, these will be an easy purchase.

I want to suggest Google Authenticator for a Pick, a great little app for working with two factor authentication logins. [Jennie says this is an Android app that generates 2-step verification codes on your phone and even works in airplane mode.]

Hi Tom: One of the free tools I use a lot, especially when I want to completely nuke a computer and do a “real” clean install of Windows is Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN): http://www.dban.org/

Or, if you want to blow away a drive that’s heavily infected with viruses and other malicious code it’s perfect.

You burn it to a disc and then boot from it and use the command line interface. For most consumers the “Quick or Auto Nuke” option is good enough, but for the truly paranoid, you can your drive to near Department of Defense standards. You can set it to overwrite the drive up to 7 times.

Here’s an example of using it for a clean install of Windows 7 that I wrote for the former byte.com and InformationWeek: http://www.informationweek.com/how-to-do-a-fresh-install-of-windows-7/d/d-id/1098548

My favorite tool is a website that helps me find my favorite tools 🙂 It is called alternativeto.net

When you have questions such as “Is there a tool like WinZip on the Mac?”, “What was the name of that free program that works like Photoshop?” or “Is everyone still using ACDSee?”, then you can enter the name of the tool you have in mind, and the website will list all similar programs by popularity. You can also narrow the search by platform or by license type (free, open source, or commercial). I use both Mac and Windows and this site helped me populate my machines with nice tools.

“Il parle sans savoir et sans comprendre”* Or, according to the addictive language-learning app Duolingo, “He is talking without knowing and without understanding.” This free app can teach you to say that in six languages – Spanish, French, German, Italian, English and Portuguese. The app was crowned Apple’s App of the Year in 2013 and it’s worth every free penny. Unlike Spanish 101, you don’t have to get up for class at 8am, you don’t have to remember to answer to your “Spanish name,” and best of all, it’s actually FUN. If languages really aren’t your forte, at the very least, it’s a source of unintentional giggles when asking you to translate phrases, like “Erwachsenen haben diese Traume,”* or, “No normal adults have these dreams.” (H/T to the wtfduolingo tumblr for finding the app’s sometimes awkward awesomeness.)

Hi Tom: To continue the thread of smart lightbulbs, I have a friend who has a couple of the Philips Hue bulbs, and he raves about their ability to change colour, much more than apps to turn them on and off. He has tuned them (is that the correct word?) to change to a warm orange colour in the evenings. This gives a much less harsh blue colour that is bad for your eyes and for your sleep pattern (citation needed?). I believe the theory is that blue light is associated with daylight, and therefore is unnatural to get a lot of at night.

Anyway, this reminded me of a Pick that I meant to email about a few weeks ago. f.lux (http://justgetflux.com/) is a Mac, Windows and Linux app that changes the colour/hue of your screen to a similar warm orange colour once the sun sets in your area. The change between normal colours and the orange colour happens gradually over several minutes so it’s much less noticeable. I’ve only tried the Mac version, but it’s very configurable and lightweight.

This is to, again, protect your eyes and sleep pattern. It’s a little weird to begin with, but once I was used to it I find it really uncomfortable to go back. It’s great for those night owls working in the evenings.

I just wanted to let you know about a seemly little known backup program provided by Amazon AWS. Amazon Glacier is an Archiving Solution that is aimed to replace tape backups, however it works great, and is quite cheap to backup my important files.

With Glacier, you pay for what you use, and how you use it. For example, to send data to Glacier is free, and 1 cent per GB per month to store the data. Now because it is more of an Archiving solution, to retreive the data, they have a tiered pricing but about .12 cents per GB (for less than 10TB)

As my offsite backup solution, I am currently paying ~.47 cents a month (<$6 a year) to store ~40 GB of data. Even thought Amazon will charge me to restore the data, in case of a disaster, I am very willing to pay the 20-30 dollars to restore my data. While not the most user friendly backup solution, I will not setup my mom on this, but for anyone with some minor tech skills, easy peasy.

Tonx is great, but the G.I Joe Coffee Company is awesome for an entirely different reason. They are all fair trade, good quality coffee, but 20% of all proceeds go to support disabled veterans. I know you get tons of picks, but I figured I had to throw one in the mix since it is a cause near and dear to my heart (retired Army and 90% disabled myself).

Guest Peter Wells lives in Australia, one day ahead of the United States. This means he has to do a lot of time zone conversions. He selected everytimezone.com , a lovely site that makes it easy to see what time of what day it is for the person you’re calling or emailing.

Fellow patreon here with a suggestion for a daily pick. I work for a small construction company and we are constantly struggling with conference calling from our mobile phones. A quick google search for free conferencing results in a lot of unsatisfying choices and paid solutions seem to be priced more for larger companies. After trying numerous options I found UberConference this week. Evidently they have been around for 2 years and were started by the creator of GrandCentral which became Google Voice.
The service is free to signup and gives you a dedicated phone number and PIN that never change. They do have a paid version for $10/month that lets you select a local phone number and eliminate the need for PIN. You can import your address book using Google, LinkedIn or CSV files. You can also link your Evernote, Google Drive, and Box accounts for easy file sharing. The web interface is very simple to use and there is also an app for iPhone and Android. You can visually see who is part of the conference call and when they are speaking. Even mute or boot them from the call. There is also a version that works inside Google Hangouts for video conferencing and screen sharing.

I recommend everyone looking for cheap but not “cheap” conferencing check this out. Their intro video is pretty funny too summarizing the frustrations of most conferencing systems.

I came across this great piece of software for encrypting your documents in cloud storage accounts called Boxcryptor
They have a free and paid for accounts that allow you to…….wait for it…..encrypt your files….. You can use it with OneDrive, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive etc…. It uses AES-256 bit encryption, you can use it on Mac or PC. It’s just a great way to keep you stuff secure. I found this program looking for something to put on added security with my tax returns in the cloud.

Your conversation about distraction motivated me to write in about one of the most useful anti-distraction tools I use: Rescue Time. I’ve been working from home as a web developer for the majority of the past 10 years. When you don’t have a boss breathing down your neck, managing distractions becomes pretty important to getting any work done.

Rescue Time is a desktop app (with a web component) that does two main things.

1. Tracks all of your website and desktop app usage, then gives you daily productivity reports with fancy graphs and charts. The app comes with good presets for common productive and distracting websites/apps. But you’re also able to redefine these. On top of this, you can configure reporting goals (like “limit distractions to 1.25hrs per day”) to give yourself some positive feedback when you’re doing well.

2. It allows you to set a “Get Focused” time. During this time it the app will block all distracting websites (unfortunately, it’s not technically possible to block desktop apps). They haven’t made the block impossible to bypass, but I find that the Rescue Time wall is often enough motivation get my ass back in gear. This feature works well with something like The Pomodoro Technique.

Hola DTNS crew! Tom, I’ve followed you since BoL and am ecstatic about the success of DTNS. For a pick, I would like to recommend Ninite.com

Ninite is a service that allows you to grab an auto-installer for many commonly used Windows applications such as Chrome, .NET, MSE, Dropbox, the list goes on and on. Not only will it download the most recent version of the programs selected from the companies, but automates the process to decline any crap-ware offers (sorry Ask Toolbar).

As an IT Professional that has to deal with an environment where images can’t be used for reworks due to a plethora of hardware, Ninite has been a huge time saver.

Since you are accepting PotD suggestions, I wanted to throw my hat in the ring. I highly recommend that everyone keep an off-site backup of some kind, and I have done a lot of homework and recommend Backblaze very highly.

There are lots of ways to keep an off-site backup (Mozy, Carbonite, Crashplan, Transporter…even Dropbox or the recently discounted Google Drive). But for me, Backblaze is the best balance of cost, security, and ease of use.

I pay $5/month for unlimited backups, and I definitely get my money’s worth. I have an external Drobo holding over 100,000 photos and videos, plus the usual cadre of music and documents and whatnot. It is currently 2.1TB of stuff, and Backblaze never bats an eye.

In a nutshell:
– $5/month unlimited
– Data is heavily encrypted on your machine before transmission and storage
– Incremental backups (roll back as far as a month if a file gets deleted or damaged)
– Lightweight, install-and-forget client for Mac and Windows
– Backs up the whole computer by default (you don’t have to pick folders or keep your stuff somewhere specific)
– Free Internet restores (from anywhere) as zip files, or get mailed a USB drive or hard disk for a fee

Something that I use on a daily basis to keep my cables organized are Nite Ize Gear Ties. Granted, they are glorified twist ties, but they’re super durable and useful. I use one to keep the usb with my external, one for my macbook charge cable, and one for my headphones. When they’re not holding cables, they make great stands for phones/tablets.

Tyler: I have a suggestion for a pick, one that seems very appropriate for DTNS. Pocketcasts is one of the best podcast apps on Android and iOS (I’m listening to a DTNS episode with it as I type this).

It’s been around for a while and offers sync between devices, great for if you have a phone and tablet that you both use for podcasts, supports audio, video, playlists, everything you would expect.

I mention it because it was just recently updated to add chromecast support, which is a pretty nice add for it, especially on video podcasts.

Marlon: Hey Tom, I wasn’t planning on sending another one of these for a while but yesterday, what I consider the best podcasting app on Android, Pocket Casts got updated with Chromecast support (iOS update coming soon). But the real reason I am recommending it is that the Daily Tech News Show is one of the featured podcast on the Chromecast standby image that you see on the television between podcasts. For that alone it gets my tip of the hat. Love the show, Marlon It is how I’ve been consuming content created by Tom for years, and I imagine that many of the listeners use some kind of podcast app, and this one is absolutely worth checking out.

3/17/2014: When Is Good via Matthew, Coventry England
Loving the show. Would just like to draw your attention to a neat little website, www.whenisgood.net It is a simple service which allows you to find the best time for an event. I am a regular user of shared calendars in Outlook (mostly in a professional context) and events on Facebook (mostly in a personal one), but I am using When Is Good more and more in the first instance these days because it allows me to propose several times up front and let attendees dictate the best one rather than proposing a single time and rescheduling if it doesn’t work out. It is also really useful because it is its own platform and it doesn’t require users to sign up: I am a part-time University student and I like the fact that I can invite classmates to a group project meeting without being Facebook friends with them and know that they won’t need to jump through hoops to deal with it (we do have a shared calendar but no one uses it).

I wanted to pass this little gem of a site along to you and the DTNS listeners: Clippingmagic.com. This site grants the ability to remove backgrounds from any picture and create pre-keyed images. As a long time Youtube Toy reviewer I have found this site to be indispensable in making useful images out of what would be otherwise unusable PR stock photos. I thought you might find this useful and I hope my fellow DTNS listeners will as well.

Automatic is like a fitbit for your car! It plugs into your car’s ODB port and connects via BTLE to your smartphone (Android or iOS).

The app gives you feedback on your driving (I now know it costs me $5 in gas to get to work in the morning), saves where you park on a map so you don’t get lost in the parking lot, tells you what’s wrong when the check engine light comes on and will even call 911 for you if you are in an accident.

On top of all that, they’ve recently added iBeacon support (which doesn’t mean a lot now, but in the future can do stuff like let you in and out of your parking garage or even pay at a drive-through apparently) and, as of today, IFTTT support (finally I can stop getting in trouble for forgetting to text my wife when I’m on my way home from work, or, alternatively, I can use it to do things like turn off the lights when I leave home.)

I always heartily endorse Writer, at writer.bighugelabs.com. Its essentially an internet typewriter, a super stripped down word processor. By default its green text on a black background (takes me back to my DOS days), and when in full screen mode it gives the best distraction free writing experience I’ve ever had. It has basic features, word count and a word count goal percentage, along with online saving across their servers. There’s a subscription option with some more advanced editing features and the ability to save to Google Drive/Dropbox, but the free version is all I’ve ever need. Every time I try NaNoWriMo its my go to.

I recently discovered an app that allows me to use my Google Chromecast to play videos stored on my Android device. The free application is called AllCast. It is available on the playstore. A review can be found here.

2/17/14: Ninite via Brian Burgess: One app or service pick you should consider mentioning is Ninite.com . It makes reinstalling all of your free and Open Source programs on Windows extremely simple. Just check off the programs you use the most and download a single installer file. I’ve written this up in the past and talked with the developers. And the cool thing is, not only does it save time, but each app is always up-to-date, and the installer automatically unchecks the crapware and toolbars that some of those free apps try to install. Unlike Cnet’s download.com that requires playing Whack-a-Mole to install a clean version of Adobe Reader or Flash. They also have one for Linux users: http://ninite.com/linux/

41 thoughts on “PICKS”

Huge fan of the show. I got really pumped about Nilay Patel’s article after I heard about it on DTNS and I was wondering if you know of any Whitehouse.gov petition or survey that has been started in regards to the FCC’s cozy relationship with the telecom lobby. If a petition like that gets 100,000 signatures, the White House will be required to respond. It’s not a guarantee that any problems will be solved, but it is a pretty awesome way of forcing the government to exercise some accountability.

Thanks again for a great show. I listen every day and enjoy the quality of analysis so much.
Cheers!

I don ‘t know about you but I’m always in Windows Explorer managing and searching for files. That is until I found a multi-pane and multi-tab file manager replacement called XYplorer. Its the bees knees!

As far as the lightbulbs are concerned what about mixing them with the new smart tattoo technology so that the lights turn on and off as you enter and leave rooms. Obviously this could also currently work with your smartphone. Kind of like the video screens that followed him around in the first iron man.

I shoot HD video professionally and needed a photo app to shoot a 16 x 9 shape that I can use for HD productions on occasion. Oddly the native IOS photo app can’t do that. Both ProCam apps work well and can shoot images in the 16 x9 shape.

These apps also help me for personal video productions. They can shoot in a four different file sizes. I love the 720P setting as I feel it is perfect quality for Youtube but saves me 40% or so in file sizes.

Both apps are well-designed because they create a digital version of normal camera dials. If you are familiar with running about any camera these will be an easy purchase.

My pick is PFsense (www.pfsense.com), if you like DDWRT as a router firmware you will LOVE PFsense it is a opensource free router software that runs on old hardware AOK. Loaded FULL of enterprise level features and easy configuration. It is able to keep up with my 100 MB internet and high user demands with logging, multiple network segments, Guest network capture portal with vouchers, and so much more. It is overkill for any residential router but that’s how use geeks role!

I love using Dropbox for storing and sharing many of my personal files. However as I work in healthcare I have to be extra careful when it comes to storing and sharing Protected Health Information. I highly recommend ownCloud (owncloud.org) as a private cloud alternative. They have Mac, PC and Linux clients as well as iOS and Android apps. The data is securely stored on our company servers. And best of all it’s open source software.

With a pretty minimalistic interface, the app can be as simple or complex as you want – no mean feat in this day & age. That it has native clients available for virtually every platform out there, as well as offline mode in the web app is just icing on the cake.

My pick is called WSUS Offline Update. It’s a tool that uses the Windows Update features of Windows to download all available updates from Microsoft’s servers for the products you select. After downloading the files it can make an ISO image or output the files to a folder for use with a USB drive.

I use it on new builds of computers or VMs so I don’t have to babysit them while getting them up to date. When you run it on the target system there are options for to automatically restart after rebooting to continue the update process. It really saves time when you have a new Windows install and need to do other stuff while it updates.

After hearing you talking about device management and wireless file transfers coming soon to Apple’s ecosystem (WWDC 2014), I thought I’d suggest AirDroid as a pick of the day. It allows you to send and receive SMS via your phone, manage contacts, clipboard content, files, media and apps, locate your phone, stream video from your phone’s camera(s) or stream the screen of your device all through a web interface.

As long as your phone (can be wireless via wifi) is on the same network as your computer (connection here can be wired or wireless), they can link up making this great for using it anywhere. You just pull up the easy to remember URL (web.airdroid.com), scan a QR code on the screen, and you’re connected.

It’s great at home, the office, or even at a friend’s computer for quick direct file transfers.

I mentioned this in an e-mail to Cordkillers, but it’d make a good pick here too. Auphonic.com is a free automatic audio post-processor. I’ve been using it on my podcast for a while because Levelator just wasn’t doing a good job on one of our host’s audio tracks that was really quiet. Auphonic does a great job cleaning our audio and we also have it add our tags, chapter marks, and album art to the files before it uploads the file to our web host. It’s an awesome service that has shaved a good chunk of time from our podcast editing process.

Your public library has audio books and ebooks for free. Just go in to the library and sign up. They give you credentials and voila you have access to countless books. My local library is part of the OverDrive lending system. It works great for me.

I recently got a Macbook Air (my first Apple computer), although I haven’t switched to it completely. I shuffle between it and a Lenovo Thinkpad and am pretty comfortable with both operating systems by now.

After struggling with using an external Logitech keyboard with the Macbook, I finally gave up and got the Apple wired keyboard. I preferred it over the wireless one because it comes with a numeric pad and some extra keys (including Page Up and Page Down), which I find extremely useful. The kicker though, is the fact that it comes with two built-in USB ports. This is awesome given that the MB Air has just two of those. I now have the keyboard plugged into the laptop, the mouse into the keyboard and still have a couple ports available for USB drives and the phone.

Plus, I don’t have to worry about batteries or charging the keyboard. One less device to worry about running out of juice!

Hi Tom, there was a “pick” a couple of weeks ago about audible cues for people to use who were blind or partially sighted. I wanted to recommend, but my sieve like memory has misplaced the name, and now I can’t even find it on the “picks” page. would you please let me know what that was called? Thanks

The app is similar to iMessage in that it allows Android users to send text messages from their tablet and computer (through a chrome extension) keeping me from switching to my phone whenever I am using my other devices.

The app also has neat features like: telling you your phone’s battery life, contacts, scheduling future messages, and you can dial from one of the other apps.

My pick of the day is Pushbullet, which works with Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and more coming soon. (There is Mac support through the Chrome extension)
The reason I use and love it, is how easy it is to send messages around to my different devices. If I find a useful article that I don’t have time to read before work, I can just push it to my work computer. If I get a text message on my phone, it will pop up a little window on my computer with the message, and allow me to reply back or send out a new message without having to pick up my phone.
If my Ingres portal is being attacked, a message on my computers from my phone will let me know.
You can send files between machines as well.

My pick is learnerds.com. For anyone in the Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math field, or any other nerds, they provide a daily question to keep reminded of some fundamentals that people may forget.

I can keep sharp by solving a quick question during my morning coffee.

It is an android app and Firefox extension that allows you to play YouTube videos as if they were from a music player. You can create play lists and control the music from the lock screen or notification bar.

It’s been great for listening to lectures on my way to class and for listening to hard to find music uninterrupted while on the go.

It doesn’t pull your play lists from YouTube and it consumes the same amount of data as streaming the video but I really like this app and think a lot of listeners will too.

Unhecky is a windows program that automatically uncheckes offers for additional software when installing programs in windows. It saves you from accidentally clicking through and accepting terms for programs that you most likely do not want.

It’s also a great thing to install on a parent’s computer to avoid them installing unwanted programs.

My pick is “podcast addict”. It’s my favorite podcast app for android. It has great podcast management (as far as downloads and playback) It is also developed by a french guy that is very dedicated to making it even better. There is a beta channel for those that want to test the newest features before they come out and the dev is very responsive.
My favorite features are auto downloads, plain name file names (so you can copy and past or open in other apps if you ever need to, chromecast support, android wear support, custom album art/thumbnails and lots of customizability (but its not necessary to run the app)

I can’t find it on here but I remember a show someone mentioned some video game music or music in the style of video games and wanted to check it out, was on the road so didn’t write it down and can’t even remember when I hear it! Any help would be appreciated! Reply on here or dtns at knowbuddies dot com (not spam I promise, just a catch all!)

Pick: Raspberry Pi with XBMC (for use in Hotels!)
Hi guys!
I realise this pick has technically already been used (10/20/2014) but I’d like to upgrade it to a travel essential. I spent last weekend going to a couple of gigs in London, and packed a Raspberry Pi with XBMC, Portable Hard Drive and powered USB hub. If there was a spare hour or so we would watch TV shows and Films off the Pi, rather than paying £5 to rent them from the entertainment system. Amazingly the TV at the first hotel supported CEC so I could control the Pi with the TV remote. (I think the second TV supported it, but the supplied remote was for the hotel’s entertainment box. So maybe a small USB keyboard would be handy)

I recently had an error where OneDrive irreversibly lost a couple gigs of my photos and documents.

I decided to buy an external backup drive and also to grab my remaining files and move to Google Drive.

Multcloud made this processes incredibly simple, I simply logged in to my old OneDrive account and my new Google Drive account on the site and the remaining 80 gigs of files were transferred over easily.

While the service is free, there is a 2TB limit but you can get unlimited transfers by making a facebook or google+ post.

My pick is the combination of Google Music and Amazon Prime Music. We often talk about Apple Music, Spotify and Rdio but not a lot of talk about of Amazon Prime Music. But its the part of Amazon prime I use the most at work. It does not have the latest hits but if you have a little grey in your beard like me they have a great back catalog with a lot of good playlists . The biggest lacking is their radio stations but google has great instant mixes and radio station based upon a single track. It’s a great way to save 120 dollars a year which will pay for your prime.

Hi guys,
I’ve been on the lookout for a world news podcast with a similar format to DTNS. Tom mentioned on Twitter he knew someone who was working on one. I look forward to hearing more about that but I also found this excellent BBC one, too:http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrsmt/episodes/downloads

After hearing you describe your graph paper room layout approach, I thought I would share a great website that I have used for the past few years. The site is Floorplanner.com, and it allows you to dimension a room and then pick pre-made models of furniture, windows and other objects and place them. Each object can be dimensioned to match whatever you will be placing, and can also be easily rotated as well. You can see exactly how everything fits, and as a bonus the site has a 3D view mode that renders all the furniture so you can see how it would look somewhat in real life.

It’s free for a small number of layouts, and a pro version is available that lets you do more. It works great, doesn’t require any installation, and is easy to learn.

I wanted to share a new productivity app for managing people who are completing tasks while you are not present to check their work. Its called TaskAssure. It has dozens of applications from ensuring that your vacation property is being cleaned and maintained, to monitoring in-home elder care givers all the way to making sure your kids are doing their chores! It sends text messages to note time start and time end and utilizes GPS location tracking to produce a map of an individuals location while requiring photos be uploaded to ensure task has been completed to standard. The software can be used for virtually any tasks and has the potential to entirely replace costly property management companies not to mention make sure little Jimmy is taking the trash out.

I hope your listeners can find some unique uses for this app and I’d love to hear what ever they come up with!

I don’t know if anybody else has mentioned this site pluralsight.com which is my pick of the day. I think of this a Lynda for programmers rather than creatives. If you plan on spending more than a few years in IT training is incredibly important, on learning new technologies. I’ve found the course very in depth and covers everything from server administration to game programming. I try to spend at least 30 minutes a day working on a learning task.

I’ve been looking for a one-click fix for Windows 10’s privacy issues and found ShutUp10. It has recommended settings which disable a lot of the phoning home that Windows 10 does. It’s free and as far as I can tell, has no strings attached.

Didn’t see my pick on the spreadsheet so I thought I might re-post it.

I’ve tried tons of media players in the past, but I’ve not been able to find a way to play YouTube videos in a desktop media player. I finally found one when I looked at PotPlayer by a company called Daum at http://potplayer.daum.net.

It plays everything under the sun, like VLC, but also supports high quality video scaling software such as madVR as plugins.